Our social media presence was mostly focused on Instagram because it allowed us to publish diverse forms of content (images, reels, videos…), which cannot be done as easily on other social media platforms. Nonetheless, although at a lesser degree, we were also present on Twitter, TikTok and Facebook and interacted with the wider iGEM community through those platforms too.

Our media strategy was focused on interacting with our follower base and other iGEM teams as much as possible. In order to achieve this, we were posted regularly and were particularly active on our Instagram stories, since these proved to be an excellent way of cementing your Instagram presence and keeping our follower base engaged. Indeed, our stories reached an average of 69 people and in total increased visits to our profile by 11.5%. A set of stories that were particularly successful with our followers (reached an average of 79 accounts) was our series #iGEMersinthewild. The objective behind this challenge was to show how iGEM becomes a large part of its participants lives, leading people to do iGEM-related activities in the most unexpected places.

The main aim of our Instagram posts was to promote our team’s activities (collaborations, human practices, etc.). Our posts were particularly successful with our audience, with each post reaching an average of 201 people. Quite interestingly, the posts also useful for directing people to our profile, with an average of 43% of each post’s views being from accounts that were not following us. This meant that this year we managed to significantly increase our follower base on Instagram, thus increasing the number of people to whom we were able to communicate news in synthetic biology and our project. Quantitatively speaking, we were able to increase our follower base by 19% since we took over the account. To take advantage of this increase in our Instagram community, we decided to communicate some of the lesser-known uses of synthetic biology, such as its current uses in the fashion and construction industries. In this series of 7 posts, which led to our Project Reveal, we presented the current problems with the construction industry, some up-and-coming alternatives and invited our followers to guess what our project was going to be on.

What We Did

UCL Open Days was a 2-day event hosted by the University College London where potential UCL students got the chance to ask current students and faculty members about specific degrees and departments. As part of this event our iGEM team created an interactive booth. Throughout the 2-day event we talked to more than 150 people (predominantly potential students and their relatives) about the UCL Department of Biochemical Engineering, synthetic biology and our iGEM project. The booth was split into visual and interactive displays to showcase exciting projects within synthetic biology and our department.

Can You Beat the Prof’s Time?

One of the most popular features of the booth was the card matching game. The goal of the game was to match each question card to its respective answer card as fast as you can. Potential students, parents and curious academics from UCL all competed against Professor Nicolas Szita’s time. Whoever could match the cards in a shorter time was than rewarded with sweets and honourable mention on the leader board. The leader board not only served to encourage competition but was also used to backtrack how many people we engaged with throughout the day. The game was design to introduce synthetic biology in a fun and engaging way. The game was rather about deduction; hence it was inclusive to all age groups and levels of knowledge.

Agar Plate Art

As part of the display, we have also prepared 12 agar art plates that we created in the lab beforehand.  We engineered E. coli to express different coloured chromoproteins and fluorescent proteins, which when plated and incubated developed into different design. Through this agar art installation, we tried to bridge art with synthetic biology and show prospective student how the disciplines can intertwine, sparking curiosity. For example, the Petri dish designs containing E. coli with fluorescent proteins were faintly visible by the naked eye. Once the visitor placed the Petri dish into a blue light box, the fluorescent proteins got excited, and the design was revealed. The agar art served to educate visitors on basic concepts of synthetic biology in the lab. By presenting the concept in a creative and tangible visual form, we were able to engage with a wider audience who never heard of synthetic biology before.

Building with Biology is an annual taster day run by the UCL Department of Biochemical Engineering via University of London for students interested in synthetic biology in years 10 through A level. This year, UCL iGEM was invited to help host. Through this event, we aimed to educate highschoolers about synthetic biology, its applications and the wide variety of career paths within the field.

After a presentation on UCL’s Department of Biochemical Engineering by Dr Rana Khalife, Maya explained the fundamentals of synthetic biology using a circuit analogy to simplify different components of genes. Stefan demonstrated real-world applications using a cell and gene therapy case study, and then Dr Stefanie Frank explained synthetic biology’s uses in vaccine development. Ines and Jenna finished the presentation by covering what iGEM is, what UCL has done in the past, and our 2022 project. Participants also had the opportunity to ask questions at the end.

We had 9 participants, all of whom interacted with the presentation through surveys and questions asked through MentiMeter during the latter half of the presentation, and their responses suggested that they were both engaged in the webinar and had learned about synthetic biology by the end of the two hours.

The data collected from the MentiMeters gave us a good understanding of what students are interested in. Based on this feedback and information, we could also see that while most students would be willing to get stem cell therapy in an emergency, there was a level of caution around receiving it for more superficial reasons, alongside a good existing understanding of some of the ethical issues associated with stem cell therapy. There was also a lack of awareness about synthetic biology’s uses outside of medicine.

As a result, we planned more immersive talking points for our next outreach event, the UCL Open Days, especially to emphasize the safety measures used in synthetic biology and its potential across industries. A main issue with synthetic biology is how unattainable it feels, whether that it due to how new and advanced the technology is, or the strict regulation surrounding the field. By addressing these points, we wanted to get students more interested in pursuing synthetic biology in higher education.

We also received feedback collected by the department on all of the Biochemical Engineering taster days, of which Building With Biology was one. Students were overall equally or more likely to apply to university after attending an open day, which suggested we were successful in sparking curiosity and interest in the field of synthetic biology. Our participants also came from a variety of ethnic backgrounds and were majority female, which is vital for boosting accessibility and representation in STEM fields as a whole.

MentiMeter Survey

Check out the result of the 1st poll at the start of the presentation vs the result of the 2nd poll at the end of the presentation. The polls show the students have gained a better understanding of the field by the end of the 2 hours.

Slide Deck